Museums in Lima

Museo Larco is one of Latin America's most celebrated pre-Columbian art museums, housing over 45,000 artifacts in a beautifully restored 18th-century viceregal mansion built atop a 7th-century pyramid. Founded in 1926 by Rafael Larco Hoyle, the museum offers an unparalleled journey through 5,000 years of Peruvian history.

The site museum at Huaca Pucllana provides essential context for understanding the massive adobe pyramid that rises in the middle of Miraflores. Archaeological finds from ongoing excavations — ceramics, textiles, and human remains — are displayed alongside scale models explaining the Lima and Wari cultures.

The Museo de Arte Italiano is a Neo-Renaissance palace in the Parque de la Exposición, gifted to Peru by the Italian community in 1923. It houses European art and hosts contemporary exhibitions.

The Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) occupies the Palacio de la Exposición, a striking neo-Renaissance building from 1872 set in the Parque de la Exposición. Its permanent collection spans 3,000 years of Peruvian artistic production, from pre-Columbian textiles to contemporary installations.

The Museo de Oro del Perú houses a dazzling private collection of pre-Columbian gold artefacts, ceremonial objects, and military weaponry assembled by collector Miguel Mujica Gallo.

The Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú is the oldest state museum in Peru, tracing the country's civilisations from early hunter-gatherers to the Inca Empire.

The Museo de la Nación is Peru's national museum, offering an encyclopedic overview of the country's civilizations from the earliest hunter-gatherers to the Inca Empire. Housed in a massive brutalist building in San Borja, it provides excellent context for understanding Peru's archaeological sites.

The Museo Naval del Perú in Callao documents Peru's maritime history, with particular focus on the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) and the heroism of Admiral Miguel Grau.

Museo Pedro de Osma houses one of Peru's finest collections of colonial-era art in a magnificent early 20th-century Barranco mansion. The collection spans four centuries of viceregal painting, sculpture, silverwork, and furniture, offering rich insight into the fusion of European and Andean artistic traditions.

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC Lima) is the city's dedicated contemporary art space, located on the coastal edge of Barranco with views of the Pacific. Opened in 2013, it showcases Latin American contemporary art in clean, purpose-built galleries.

The Museo Amano is a private textile museum in Miraflores, home to one of the world's finest collections of pre-Columbian Andean weaving, curated by Japanese-Peruvian collector Yoshitaro Amano.

The Museo de la Inquisición is housed in the former headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition's Lima tribunal. Its vaulted basement cells and life-size wax dioramas vividly recreate the tribunal's operations.

The Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (LUM) is a memorial museum documenting the violence of Peru's internal armed conflict (1980–2000), which claimed nearly 70,000 lives. Set in a striking modernist building on the Miraflores coast, it serves as both museum and space for reflection.

Pre-Inca pilgrimage centre 40 km south of Lima with adobe pyramids and a reconstructed sun temple..